#74 · How I Went From 0 to 100,000 on Instagram in 83 Days
I basically pick a number, throw it against the wall, and see what sticks. If I can consistently deliver 10 leads, I guarantee 10. If I overshoot, I raise it to 15 or 20; if I can’t hit 10, I drop to five. It’s a mix of intuition, feeling how good a person is at selling, and how much control they want over messaging.
When you're starting out, how do you decide the numbers behind an offer like, 'I guarantee X booked calls in Y days or you don't pay'? What's your thought process for choosing realistic X and Y figures before you have much data? My thought process is pretty straightforward: I try 10, and if I can hit 10 consistently, I try 15; if I can hit 15 consistently, I try 20; if I can hit 20 consistently, I try 30; and just repeat that process over and over. In my case, I ended up somewhere around 20 in 60 days. That's about it. So it's not about choosing the numbers before you have much data—just start low and then work your way up.
I start with two emails total (the initial plus one follow-up). Based on response, I add another follow-up if engagement is okay, and another after that if it continues to work. However, sending too many follow-ups risks being marked as spam, so I adjust based on how recipients react.
I start with two emails in total: one main email and one follow‑up. The reason is to put yourself in the shoes of someone reading a crappy email. Think about how many times you’ve opened a pitch email, marked it as unread, or ignored it. If the email isn’t good, a follow‑up makes the recipient far more likely to mark it as spam—about 100× more likely after the first follow‑up and a thousand times after a second. The number one thing we’re trying to avoid in cold email is being marked as spam. So, before you know your copy is good, do not add more than one additional follow‑up, spaced about 48 hours apart. Once your copy is acceptable—say a 3 % reply rate or a 0.5–1 % positive reply rate—you can add more follow‑ups. Adding them will raise your total reply rate, though the proportion of positive replies may drop, the absolute number of positive replies will still increase.
To decide when to cut a cold email campaign, look at the positive reply rate. It depends on the niche—higher‑ticket niches often have lower reply rates. A rule of thumb: don’t send more than about 1,000 emails per piece of copy before checking results. Aim for around a 1% positive reply rate; if you’re getting ~0.8% after 1,000 sends, that’s decent and can be improved to 1–1.5%. If most of your campaigns are performing poorly (e.g., five out of six at ~0.9% while one is at ~0.8%), drop the weak ones and create variants based on the better performer. There’s no perfect threshold, but this is how I evaluate campaigns.